After 23 years, judge throws out murder conviction for men allegedly framed by Chicago cop...

After 23 years, judge throws out murder conviction for men allegedly framed by Chicago cop

CHICAGO — A Cook County judge on Wednesday ordered the release of two men who spent more than 23 years in prison for murder, but have long insisted they were framed by a Chicago police detective who is at the center of several wrongful conviction probes.

In a brief court hearing Wednesday, Judge LeRoy Martin agreed to the prosecutor's office request to vacate the convictions of Jose Montanez, 49, and Armando Serrano, 44, who were serving 55-year sentences for the 1993 murder of Rodrigo Vargas, slain in what authorities said was an armed robbery. The men have been behind bars for more than 23 years, and more than a decade after the prosecution's star witness recanted his testimony.

The move by the office of Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez comes after a state appellate court ruling issued last month found that "profoundly alarming acts of misconduct in the underlying investigation and prosecution" led to the men's convictions.

It was an about face for Alvarez, who initially resisted a recommendation issued last year by former federal prosecutor Scott Lassar that the prosecutor reopen six cases, including the murder convictions of Montanez and Serrano, that were investigated by police detective Reynaldo Guevara. The cop, who retired more than a decade ago, has faced dozens of allegations of framing or beating confessions out of suspects during his time as detective in a predominantly Latino neighborhood on the city’s Northwest Side. Lassar’s firm, Sidley Austin, was commissioned by Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office to review the allegations.

“Anita Alvarez has indicated a new direction with these Guevara cases,” said Russell Ainsworth, an attorney with the University of Chicago’s Exoneration Project who represented Montanez. “We are now no longer viewing these men as murderers but as the innocent men that they are. Their cases need to be reexamined. There are dozens and dozens of people who are innocent and currently incarcerated because of Detective Guevara’s conduct.”

Facing the prospect of a retrial, Alvarez's office said in a statement that prosecutors "determined that we are unable to meet our burden of proof at this time, so we believe that it is in the best interests of justice to dismiss this case."

The lynchpin of the prosecution of Montanez and Serrano was the testimony of Francisco Vincente, a heroin addict who was facing a long prison sentence on a half-dozen felony charges.

Vincente testified at Montanez and Serrano’s trial that the two men had confessed to the murder. But Vincente later recanted his testimony in a sworn statement to journalism students at Northwestern University more than a decade ago, saying that he made a false statement to win a lighter sentence. He also reportedly told the journalism students that Guevara brokered the deal and had given him cash and cigarettes for his cooperation.

Two previous murder cases involving Guevara have previously been overturned. The detective retired more than a decade ago and had refused to testify in Montanez’s and Serrano’s appeals.

In 2009, a federal jury awarded Juan Johnson $21 million after concluding that Guevara intimidated witnesses into implicating Johnson for a 1989 murder outside of a nightclub. Johnson spent 11 years in prison before being acquitted in a retrial.

The second case Guevara investigated that was later overturned involved Jacques Rivera, who served 20 years in prison for the 1988 shooting death of a teenager in Chicago’s Humboldt Park neighborhood. The state’s attorney’s office dropped the case after the sole witness, a 13-year-old boy, recanted. Rivera in a civil lawsuit accused Guevara and other officers of pressuring the witness to falsely identify him as the gunman in the killing.

The Chicago Police Department has been tarnished by years of allegations of cops torturing and beating suspects. Last year, Emanuel announced a $5.5 million reparations package to victims of rogue police commander Jon Burge, who from the early 1970s to early 1990s has been accused of overseeing the torture and beating of dozens of mostly African-American suspects.

Police brutality cases cost the city more than $500 million in settlements and legal costs over the last decade. The department is now also in the midst of a Justice Department civil rights investigation that was launched last year following widespread protests in the city after the department was forced by court-order to release police video that show a white police officer shooting an African-American teen, Laquan McDonald, 16 times on a city street.

Alvarez, who announced murder charges against the officer 400 days after the incident, lost a March Democratic primary in which her handling of the McDonald case was the centerpiece of the campaign.

Attorneys for Montanez and Serrano said they expected the men would be released Wednesday.

“I hate what he (Guevara) did and I hate what other corrupt officers do, because they destroy families like ours,” said Maria Serrano, the sister of Armando Serrano, after the judge ordered her brother’s release Wednesday. “There are still guys in there that are still going to be suffering until they get freedom . . . I feel like we won’t get full vindication until they are freed as well.”